


dreams that made us

by billspilledquill



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, They are all assholes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 12:27:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14520543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billspilledquill/pseuds/billspilledquill
Summary: Daisy is not a ghost.In which everyone is in love with the wrong person, and just for a moment, Daisy digresses.





	dreams that made us

Daisy is not a ghost.

She is not some feeble, weakling of a girl. She is a beautiful, tall fool that doesn’t have the chance of being invisible. A flower, because flowers aren’t made for vases, and vases are folded in a way to be contemplated. Flowers for the dead, she thinks, looking through the yellow glass. She lifts it on her eye level, distorted dimensions, Tom. I sighed my name on it, and all I get is flowers in return. And that’s _unfair_.

She moves her hips a little, just to show that she can, she can and can’t be lost in a pool of people’s dresses, of Gatsby. She is Gatsby’s book list, she understands. She is in Gatsby’s book, tall and beautiful. Young and beautiful, looking out with her golden eyes with her black, dark hair. She snorts when Jordan greets her, and apologizes because she thought Nick was there. He isn’t, and she doesn’t want to know why.

“How’s the party going on, sweetheart?” Jordan asks. “You looks as pale as a ghost.”

But she isn’t, she isn’t. “It’s going well,” she says, smiling a little, because the moonlight shone on her friend’s face as if she is witnessing autopsy. “You know, honey, I heard once that if you stand too much in the sun, the water drains out off you. How awful is that?”

“Oh,” Jordan replies, sipping her drink, a smirk on her face every time she knows something that should not have happened, “you needn’t worry, my friend. You never shower in the sun without Tom covers you with an umbrella.”

And his whole body covers you well, Jordan says and doesn’t say. I am sure of it.

“I’m not talking about me, Jordan,” she says, thinking of early ballet classes, when the teacher told her to pretend to be a tree. She pretends to be a tree. “I’m talking about Gatsby. I have seen him and Nick going on some walking trip from West to East Egg.”

Jordan nods, not acting surprised, not acting at all. “Weary, isn’t it? Bright young men would soon all be ruined because of some great promises of the future.”

Daisy doesn’t need to say that she feels old, because she is old, ghastly so, “Weary, yeah, I think so.”

Jordan finishes her drink, pours them into her lips in one go. It smears a little her lipstick, and so, looking around and looking at her, she kisses her just to make sure that her makeup gets ruined as well.

“Only the night is young,” she says after they broke away from each other, “and I believe your lips taste like roses, aren’t you a rose, Jordan?”

“Don’t give me some half-hearted compliment you made to your cousin,” she says, pulling out a cigarette, her long green dress moving along her legs, showing pale flesh with white light. “But I will give you this, your cousin does look like a blooming rose.”

“He is spending a lot of time with mister Gatsby,” Daisy says, wiping her mouth clean, “I wonder if they could lend me their secret for their friendship,”

“Easy,” Jordan shrugs, carefully sliding her arm around her waist. Tom is a gentleman, Daisy thinks while the fingers on her waist taps gently, a humming tone beneath the soft fabric, gentlemen don’t like to be told what and who they should be. “Easy, friend, they are going what we have just done upstairs in some quiet libraries, that’s why.”

She nods a little, not looking at her. The light is too bright to discern any stars tonight. And Daisy closes her eyes for a moment and accepts that she is drowning in the sun. It feels warm.

“It’s a hot day,” she says, lashes flickering, “I never liked winter.”

“You’ll have to go outside in mornings. Your heels aren’t made for snow.”

She fumbles a little with her hands, and shivers at the booming sound of an ending ceremony. She never thinks about the past war, because it is past. But sometimes slimmers of memories catch her off guard, the images of Gatsby dying on the field, which she secretly hopes that he did. She would have to be the flowers on his nameless stone like so many soldiers. Nameless, nothing made up to be done.

Petals for the dead, seeds for the grass that cover them.

“Tom is a strong man,” she says, teasingly, “he would have carried me all the way home.”

“He is,” Jordan replies, walking to the center of the crowd, backing away from her. “But only if you are willing to let him know where exactly that place is, sweetheart.”

Just like that, she turns her back, that green dress shining white, and Daisy is glad that she doesn’t even try to reach it, because she knows that someone would take her hand just as soon, and proves once and for all that she is not some reclusive, desperate ghost. Nothing transparent in her that needs clarifying.

In the hazy moves of the crowd, a hand slides into hers. She looks up and smiles, a beautiful night. A beautiful, young, foolish night.

Tom is looking at her with ardor, and laces their fingers together. Something of a promise can be made here, maybe, she muses.


End file.
